Published On Nov 21, 2023
The extreme rainfall that produces Appalachian floods also produces numerous landslides, but forests recover quickly and the scars from historic slide events are hidden within 30 years or so. In 1901, an extreme storm in Mitchell County, North Carolina, produced a large debris flow landslide sketched and described by W.M. Myers. Using Myers' 121-year-old drawing and text description, I found the scar of this debris flow near the headwaters of Gouges Creek on the Mitchell-Avery County Line. Myers' sketch and writing turned out to be very useful in locating the feature using LiDAR imagery, which shows the bare ground surface below the tree cover. This video compares the drawing to the real scar and shows how I used Google Maps and LiDAR to find it.